Shoes Superstition

Title: Shoe Superstition

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore: Superstition
  • English
  • United States

Informant Data:

  • Ethan Joseph Cook was born in Fort Wayne Indiana on April 23, 1998. Ethan is a freshman at Dartmouth College. It is his first year on the Dartmouth Varsity swim team, but he has been swimming competitively since he was nine years old. Ethan decided to swim in college because he really enjoyed his experiences swimming on his high school swim team and he wanted to be involved in something that has equally as great traditions and team bonding.

Contextual Data:

  • Social/Cultural Context: Ethan describes a superstition that is based on the clothing that he wears before a competition. Ethan preforms this superstition before major competitions. The socks are worn on the pool deck before he puts on his racing suit and prepares to dive into the water.

Item:

  • Ethan describes  that he wears the same pair of shoes before every competition because he believes that wearing them brings him good luck. This follows the “If A then B” superstition.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  •  “On deck before my races and after as well, I wear my lucky shoes.  They’re brown with yellow stripes on them. I really like the look of them and I’m pretty sure they make me go faster.”
  • Collector’s Comments:
  • Clothing based superstitions were extremely common among informants; especially swimmers. Since swimming is such a mentally taxing sport, it extremes to help competitors to find an article of clothing that he or she believes will increase chances of doing well.

Collector’s Name: Molly Brickman

Tags/Keywords:

  •  Shoes, Superstition

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